ping response on LAN comes from my webhost

whats the reply....

if you pinging a dud entry, then DNS will try and resolve internal, then look at forwarders....if you have an ISP forwarder then i am surprised....if you have an ISP entry in your TCPIP config then get rid of them and all will be well

thanks Jay
my forwarders are the IP's of my T1 carrier.

do you get a response or a reply?

Reply from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx etc.

huh! Thats insane, i would talk to your ISP!

If you do ipconfig /all (from the command prompt) what does it say for "DNS Suffix Search List" ?

I have two entries:

xxx.mydomain.com
mydomain.com

when I ping the first, it resolves to my internal DNS server - 192.168.66.10
when I ping the second,  it resolves to the same IP as mentioned above- IP is from the people hosting our website.

thanks.

The IP address for your Preferred DNS server (also reported by ipconfig /all) should be 192.168.66.10 - i.e. your Preferred DNS server should be your internal DNS server.

If you then examine the forward lookup zones on that DNS server using the DNS Management Console, there should be a fwd lookup zone for mydomain.com. Within that zone there should be some Host A records including one for the DNS server xxx pointing to 192.168.66.10. There will also be some records called "(Same as parent folder)" - look for a Host A record called (Same as parent folder). Does it exist and, if so, what is the IP address set to for that record?

Come to think of it, the solution to your problem is very likely that you need to remove the DNS Search suffix xxx.mydomain.com. There should only be one search suffix and that is the one for your domain. There should not be a search suffix for your DNS server!

where do I remove that from?
thanks.

My Network Places -> Properties -> Local Area Connection -> Properties -> Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) -> Properties

Now click the Advanced... button and select the DNS tab. It is almost certainly in the list that says "Append these DNS suffixes in order". Remove it from that list. If the list will then be empty, that's fine, but change the radio button selection to "Append primary and connection specific DNS suffixes"

there are no entries in there, and the radio button is selected as well as the checkbox beneath it - "Append parent suffixes of the primary DNS suffix"

on the WINS tab there is an entry. Not sure why we would be using WINS-